


Come On, Baby, Light My Fire (Geraskier antagonistic firefighters to lovers in five acts AU)

by des_pudels_kern



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Firefighters, Implied/Referenced Biphobia, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Minor Aiden/Lambert (The Witcher), Not Beta Read, Past Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Past Jaskier | Dandelion/Lambert (The Witcher), Past Jaskier | Dandelion/Valdo Marx, The Witcher Secret Santa 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-17 09:07:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28597449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/des_pudels_kern/pseuds/des_pudels_kern
Summary: Jaskier likes meeting new people. He loves meeting new people. He’s a people person!  So when it’s dislike at first sight between him and Geralt, the new guy at the firehouse, it’s clearly Geralt’s fault. No, Jaskier will not accept criticism on this.Geralt just wants to settle into his new job but has to endure emotionally mature conversations to do so. It ends up working out great.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 21
Kudos: 147





	Come On, Baby, Light My Fire (Geraskier antagonistic firefighters to lovers in five acts AU)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thisissirius](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisissirius/gifts).



> Written for thisissirius for the Witcher Secret Santa 2020, a Witcher 9-1-1 AU that I'm hoping is everything she wanted and just didn't know to ask for. Happy New Year to you, Siri, and my thanks to the mods of thewitchersecretsanta for organizing this exchange!
> 
> PSA: I know very little about the military or firefighting (American or otherwise), and what I do know are misremembered tidbits from various pieces shows. Mea culpa.

  1. Jaskier



It is a beautiful day. The sun is shining, the air mild, the firehouse is – well, okay, not sparkling, it _is_ a firehouse, but it’s moderately clean and their truck is looking impressive, and Jaskier is in a fantastic mood as he putters about the garage and finds odd things to do by the entrance.

Their new candidate will arrive any minute now.

Which means that, as of today, Jaskier, as the previous candidate, has graduated from being the new kid who gets all the shit jobs and has to earn his stripes to being a proper firefighter, a respected and fully integrated member of the team.

Not that being a candidate is that bad. Sure, there has been a lot of, well, teasing, and, when he wasn’t being drilled to the point of collapse, Jaskier spent so much time washing the truck, the dishes, the windows, and anything else his fellow firefighters could get dirty, that the skin on his hands was sometimes wrinkly for days on end. But Jaskier likes to think of it more as tough love than hazing (and there definitely was a whole lot less drinking than at your average fraternity initiation), the friendly and instructive mobbing of a sibling as they grow into the firefighter equivalent of an adult.

It’s the circle of life, and Jaskier is so looking forward to being on the other side of it.

He’s going to be a great older teammate, he has decided. Since he is still so new to the job himself, he is the one who can best relate to the new candidate, to the awe of stepping into this house and walking besides heroes, the apprehension of needing to live up to expectations and demands and the requirements of a job that is literally life or death, and the frustration of being at the bottom of the firehouse’s food chain and needing to prove that you are willing to pay your dues.

It’s all about the balance. Strengthen their body and mind and build up their confidence enough to be able to do the job and do it well, but knock them down at regular intervals so they don’t grow cocky and get themselves or someone else killed.

A delicate business.

And Jaskier is ready for some fresh-faced youngster to walk into these hallowed halls so he can mentor the shit out of them.

So, when a car pulls up to the house and parks at the side of the road, Jaskier retreats back into the shadows of the garage – just because he is pacing the garage, ready, waiting, and willing, doesn’t mean he wants to _look_ eager – but allows himself a bit of excited bouncing on his feet while he is conveniently hidden from sight.

This will be great.

Ah, yes, there they are, they, he, definitely very he-looking, and, uhm, a bit bigger than expected. And no need to build up any muscle there. Actually, the new guy might not only not be smaller than Jaskier, but in fact be about as much of a ridiculously muscled mountain as most of Jaskier’s beloved and respected older, more experienced co-workers, who, as far as Jaskier can tell, grow thicker with a new layer of muscle each year the way a tree would grow another ring.

Okay, it’s not what he was expecting, but he can work with that. Some people are just naturally gifted, body-wise.

And.

And face-wise.

That’s… a bit unfair, actually. Not to be vain, but _he_ is the pretty man in the house. That’s his thing. It’s how he stands out in a crowd of strongman-bodybuilder types next to whom Jaskier’s own body, while quite fit and well-proportioned when considered on its own, appears a bit undefined in comparison. So the new candidate walking in with that same look of _t-shirt sleeves about to tear under the strain of bulging biceps and pecs straining against fabric stretched so thin it might as well be painted_ _on_ that apparently every other male firefighter in the house but Jaskier favors (seriously how to they _move_? Jaskier has worn three-piece-suits less restricting than those pressure bandages disguised as shirts must be) and the face of a chisel-chinned Hollywood leading man playing a Greek god is overkill, is what it is.

Oh well. That doesn’t change that this is their new candidate, inexperienced, out of his depth, nervous and in need of a friendly face to make him feel welcome, help him find his feet and integrate into the team over the course of the next year.

Jaskier steps out into the middle of the garage, very casual, _I was working on the truck and not at all lurking in the shadows_ -like, puts on his friendliest, most welcoming smile, and holds out his hand.

“You must be our new candidate. Welcome to the best firehouse in the city! My name is Julian Pankratz, but please call me Jaskier; we don’t stand on ceremony here.”

This is the part where the stranger should offer up his own name and a smile in return, but he continues to not go with the script and leaves Jaskier hanging, hand hovering awkwardly between them as his gaze first flits to the side – oops, guess he might have seen Jaskier lying in wait there - before he gives Jaskier a once-over, so full of unimpressedness that Jaskier wonders if perhaps he may be acquainted with his father. The moment stretches, and Jaskier repurposes his outstretched hand to check his hair. He hasn’t put on a helmet yet today, so it should be – yes, everything in place, everything arranged in that careful _I woke up like this_ look that no one ever actually wakes up with unless they fell asleep in a stylist’s chair.

He tries again. Maybe he’s just intimidated. It happens. New place, new faces, and he looks kind of old to be a candidate, so he might expect rude questions about that (as if Jaskier would _ever_ ). Granted, he doesn’t look intimidated, but maybe he’s got a good poker fake. “And you would be?”

The man’s eyes move past Jaskier, searching the rest of the house while Jaskier’s smile freezes more and more. Well, whatever the guy is looking for, he doesn’t find it, because he finally turns back to Jaskier and opens his mouth.

“Geralt!”

They both jump at the call and turn to the opening leading from the garage further into the house, just in time for Vesemir – grey, grumpy, curmudgeonly Captain Vesemir, who, in his time here, has never even shaken Jaskier’s _hand_ – to pull the man into a hug. A hug. And not even the kind of awkward manly half-hug of tough men who don’t want to give anyone the impression that they have emotions, no, a real, proper hug, with both arms, and two slaps between his shoulder blades.

It’s entirely possible that Jaskier blacks out from the shock, because next he knows, he’s alone in the garage.

What. The.

One deep breath. Two. Then he rallies himself and steps into the hallway, following the sound of voices to the common area.

There they are, his fellow firefighters. Which is not unusual.

What is unusual, however, is the way Lambert is stepping back from Geralt, clearly just having hugged the interloper, too, and now trying to look very hard as if he hadn’t (okay, that part is normal). Then Eskel moves in close, puts his hands on Geralt’s face, and presses their foreheads together.

Jaskier may be hallucinating right now. Did he bump his head recently?

“Wolf,” Eskel says into the space between them.

Oh. Oh. Wolf, like…

“This is Geralt of Rivia,” Vesemir says, voice raised, just in case anyone isn’t paying attention yet. “He’s our new candidate, and, as you can see, an old friend who served with Eskel and Lambert in my unit at Kaer Morhen.”

The new guy isn’t _new_.

“It just took him longer to get his head out of his ass and join us at LAFD,” Vesemir continues. “I expect you to make him feel welcome.”

“This is very moving, I’m sure, but it’s almost lunchtime,” Coen calls over from two tables down, because this is quickly getting too sentimental for the poor, stoic hearts of Jaskier’s beloved but mostly emotionally stunted co-workers. Also they are firefighters and have their priorities straight. “Does the candidate know cooking is part of his new duties?”

“You can’t eat anything Geralt has cooked. He burns water and has actually poisoned people with ramen.” Lambert drops down into his usual seat and kicks out the chair next to him, waving at Geralt to sit. Eskel returns to his own place, and the three of them lean in close, heads together, probably catching up and sharing inside jokes.

Sitting like that, with Lambert and Eskel at his sides, it’s obvious how much they look alike. All three of them tall, wide, strong muscled backs and thick arms barely contained by t-shirts that surely must have shrunken in the wash, and something in their posture, how they hold themselves even sitting around a table cluttered with dirty mugs and half-empty water bottles, that speaks of danger, reminiscent of the predators that are their name-sake.

“Mh. Lambert has a point. Jaskier!” One bark from his captain, and Jaskier almost falls over his own two feet in that uncoordinated, eager stumble he was really hoping he’d magically outgrown with his graduation from candidate to not-the-new-guy.

“Kitchen,” Vesemir orders, tilting his head towards the side, where one wall is lined with a kitchenette and countertops, Jaskier’s territory this past year. “No one but you knows how to turn that stuff in the fridge into a proper meal anyway.”

Vesemir nods at him before he moves away, back into his office to do whatever it is captains do while their teams are waiting for either their next call or their next meal, whichever comes first. It’s probably meant as a compliment, because Jaskier does know how to cook. Figuring out how to convert the skills he acquired to impress dates with fancy dinners into cooking efficient, filling, delicious meals for a bunch of ever-hungry firefighters was how he first endeared himself to his new co-workers, a year ago, when he was fresh from the Firefighter Academy and arrived with a guitar on his back, under the delusion that a candidate might find time and inspiration to finally write those original songs that have escaped him for years. Finding his place in the house was not easy, and sometimes he still feels like the odd one out, with his music, and double major, and his entire background, like a theatre kid who accidentally wandered into the football team’s changing room. But it’s fine, it’s been fine, he has worked hard and proven himself and made friends, and having a new candidate come in was supposed to be the final confirmation that Jaskier has made it and is one of the guys (and gals) now.

Except it’s still Jaskier here in the kitchen, groceries spread over the countertop waiting to be cut and cooked, while everybody else sits over there, cluttered around the tables in small groups, chatting and relaxing, and this is not how he pictured the new candidate’s arrival when he imagined it in his head.

He looks out over the counter at the three Wolves, and freshly chopped onion bites at his eyes.

Geralt looks like he belongs.

Geralt is sitting in Jaskier’s chair.

The welcoming smile is well and truly wiped off his face, he suspects.

  1. Geralt



There is someone lying on the ground in front of the firehouse when Geralt pulls up in Roach (the car has been through more than him, and he’s been in and out of warzones for one and a half decades, but she’s still running).

His first instinct is _trap_. Old habits die hard.

His second thought is that someone came to the firehouse looking for help and only made it as far as the driveway, left to lie in the rain and wait for one of them to notice.

Then his wipers swipe up once more, and the image clears. It’s Jaskier, prone on the ground, and he’s not flailing about, he’s playing air guitar.

He still strongly suspects the man needs some sort of professional help, but not the kind he as a firefighter can provide. Maybe Triss and Chireadan could, being EMTs, but they have known Jaskier longer than him and haven’t arranged for an intervention yet, as far as he knows.

Geralt is weighing his options when someone walks past Roach – hood of his sweatshirt up, but judging by the bulk it can only be Letho – and up the driveway. Jaskier interrupts his strumming to wave enthusiastically, but Letho just nods at him and walks on without stopping. That’s that, then. Letho may be the meanest person in the house, but even he wouldn’t walk by someone in need of assistance, even if that person is Jaskier, who, as far as Geralt can tell, seems to have exactly three modes: annoying, weird, and rude. And all three tend to come in various flavors of _pay attention to me._ Either way, not Geralt’s problem. He grabs his bag, jumps out of the car, and hurries up the driveway towards the firehouse.

Jaskier has resumed his strumming, and now Geralt can see and hear that he’s belting into the rain.

“… _me breathless, I can’t help feeling_ morning!” No, Geralt will not be drawn into whatever this is. Geralt has been reading enough about raising children lately to know that you should not ignore their cries for attention, but Jaskier is a grown man and it’s not Geralt’s problem if his parents didn’t hug him enough as a child. He keeps his head down and walks on. Jaskier mumbles something at his back, then picks his song back up again. “ _We could have had it aaaahahaaaall, rolling in the deeeeheeheeeep_!” A few more hurried steps, then Geralt is at the door and can escape into the firehouse, out of the rain and away from whatever that display was.

The morning goes on, and he forgets about it while they go out and save a confused old lady who has locked herself into the bathroom, get a cat out of a snack machine, and cut open a car that wrapped itself around a tree (the driver was facetiming with his wife and would, quite frankly, have deserved more than a wrecked car and the few scratches he got for endangering other people like that).

He remembers, later, when Vesemir calls him into his office and tells him to close the door, all the while not looking up from his paperwork. He easily falls into the familiarity of parade rest in front of the desk.

“Geralt. It’s been a few weeks. How are you settling in.”

It’s not really a question, and Geralt stays silent.

“Words, pup,” Vesemir looks up, “and none of _that_. We are not in the army anymore. Sit down.”

Geralt uses the time it takes him to sit to think over his report. Army or not, Vesemir is their Captain, and since no one has actually been blatantly incompetent at him, Geralt will go with the true-and-tried method of subordinates everywhere: If you can’t say something nice, then don’t say anything at all.

“I’m doing well. The work is what I expected and my training at the Academy and my previous experiences in the army have prepared me well.”

“Mh. Don’t get too comfortable. You haven’t seen any tough calls yet. And how do you feel about the team?”

“I’m glad to be working with Eskel again. And Lambert. Coen, Letho, Auckes, and Serrit I am familiar with, too, which has made the transition easier than I expected. I know what they are capable of and I understand the way they work. The others I haven’t really gotten to know yet, but Téa and Véa strike me as highly competent,” Geralt adds, and hopes Vesemir will leave it at that.

Of course, he’s not that lucky.

“I’ve noticed some tension in the house. Is there a reason you are having trouble integrating into the team?”

“Renfri is an ex.” Geralt’s ears burn, and he hopes that Vesemir won’t ask for details. The two of them have mostly been avoiding each other, but he didn’t think it was an issue..

“I’m not talking about Renfri. As I understand it, she got her roasting in the first day she came in to find you sitting in the common room and considers the matter closed with that.” Vesemir’s eyes narrow, and Geralt tries not to shrink back in his chair. “You don’t like Jaskier. And he doesn’t like you.”

“I won’t let it affect my work.”

“I don’t want it to affect the working climate, either. See to it that it doesn’t.”

“It won’t from my end.” Geralt can be professional. Jaskier, from what he’s seen, not so much.

Vesemir sighs and leans back in his chair. He closes his eyes, looking tired all of a sudden.

“Maybe I didn’t do you any favors, pulling strings and getting you assigned here. But I told you to call if you ever changed your mind, and I stand by my word. How is home, by the way? The girl doing okay? Good, good. But the issue remains, Geralt, that you are here because of your connection to me. Any other candidate would have to earn my trust first, and the others’ respect. I know what you are capable of, and it is coloring my treatment of you. Same with Eskel and Lambert. Nothing wrong with competence, of course, but some people feel like you haven’t earned your place here yet.”

“Jaskier.” Lying in the driveway in the rain, where people have to pass to get into the house, and singing at the top of his lungs.

“Not just Jaskier. He may not be subtle, but he’s not the one who pulled me aside and called you a lazy punk using his old status as my prized student to weasel out of the grunt work that is your due as a candidate.”

Geralt flinches back like he’s been slapped. Lazy? He has always taken pride in doing his work, all of it, and doing it well and without shortcuts. He never had anything handed to him – but that’s not true anymore, is it? He had known, when he sat there with Ciri in his lap, having cried herself to sleep after he had to explain to her that Yennefer had left and she was stuck with him now, that calling Vesemir to take him up on a ten-year-old offer to help him leave the army and get started at the LAFD was asking for help. That he was using connections and advantages others didn’t have to make things easier for himself. He’d known, and he’d swallowed his pride and made the call anyway, because he couldn’t run away from his responsibilities any longer.

Vesemir must read some of what he is thinking in his face, because he arranges his own in an expression that might be an attempt at being comforting.

“You did what you had to do, son, and you used the resources at your disposal. No shame in that. Only now, instead of having grown into the team slowly, people feel like you think you are still in the army and don’t respect the way things work around here. Like you don’t expect LAFD rank. You are the candidate. Jaskier is not. I know he can be a little shit, but he has earned his position, while you are some upstart fresh from boot camp who thinks he doesn’t even have to greet his superior officer. Lose the attitude, or half the team won’t even give you a chance to earn their respect.”

Geralt swallows. He wishes he had a counter-argument because he does not want to cater to some overly dramatic snowflake’s sensibilities simply because he’s been here longer than him, but this is how rank works, this is how authority works, and he knows Vesemir is right.

“Yes, Vesemir.” He’ll just have to try and see Jaskier’s good sides. Think of him as eccentric rather than fucking weird. Besides, he must be at least somewhat qualified, or he’d have washed out, if not during the Academy then last year as a candidate.

Vesemir nods and turns back to his paperwork, which Geralt takes to be his dismissal.

Out of the office, he first finds himself aiming for the workout area – exercise at least has always been easy, even at times when nothing else is. Except there, on the bench, lies Renfri, in LAFD-issue workout clothes, and spotting her is Jaskier. Wearing pale pink leggings with a clef print that leave so little to the imagination that they are probably supposed to act as a conversation starter as to what kind of underwear Jaskier is even wearing. Geralt clenches his fists; can’t he even let off some steam before he has to deal with this? Everything is so fucking complicated these days, and he just wants things to be simple again. He’s itching to wrap his knuckles and work on that heavy bag over there until his shoulders are tight for an entirely different reason, until his fingers cramp and the sweat is dripping into his eyes and nothing else matters anymore but the burn in his muscles.

He doesn’t.

He can’t ignore his problems anymore. He’s done that so much and for so long, and it cost him Yen. Him and Ciri. He is here now to do right by her, and he can’t do that if he keeps up his bad habits.

With one last, mournful look at the bag he leaves the gym and goes to do what feels like the only thing he’s been doing since he woke up on the first morning of his last leave and found the other side of the bed empty, Yen gone and a letter left in her place. He goes to ask for help.

“Eskel.”

The man in question pauses in the inspection of his gear and cocks a brow at Geralt.

“Geralt.”

“Lambert,” Lambert adds from behind the truck and comes around the corner, plopping down on the bench next to Eskel with his own gear and effectively inviting himself into the conversation. Geralt manages to bite back a heartfelt _fuck_. He’d rather not have Lambert here for this, but there’s more of a chance of Lambert deciding he doesn’t want to be a part of it if he doesn’t know that.

“What’s the deal with Jaskier?”

Both of the other men’s eyes widen at that blunt question. Maybe he should have built up to it. But at least he’s got Eskel’s attention. And Lambert’s.

“Deal how,” Eskel asks.

“He doesn’t like me.”

“So what? You don’t like him,” Lambert butts in, and this is why Geralt wanted to do this with Eskel alone.

“He’s weird!”

“No, he’s not.”

“When I came in this morning, he was lying on the ground in front of the firehouse, singing. And playing air guitar.”

“It was nice out.”

Next to Lambert, Eskel is already rubbing circles into his temples, but it’s not Geralt’s fault Lambert is a contrary little prick.

“It was raining!”

“Well, there you have it. Couldn’t take the real guitar out in that weather.”

Lambert grins, smugly, as if Jaskier not using a real guitar was what made his behavior so bizarre and he’s somehow won the argument by pointing this out. Geralt entertains a fantasy of returning to the heavy bag, but this time with a photo of Lambert’s face taped to it, and letting loose. His hands curl into fists, anticipatory.

For Ciri. He’s doing this for Ciri.

“Eskel?”

Eskel stops trying to hide his face in his palms and takes mercy on him. “Jaskier double-majored in music and economics. As far as I can tell, he never cared for the economics part, but he still likes to sing, and plays several instruments.”

Geralt’s brows shoot up at that. “Then how did he end up _here_?”

Eskel goes to reply, but Lambert slaps a hand over his mouth. “What Jaskier did before he came here is none of your business.”

“I‘d just like to know whom I’m working with!” Geralt is just about done with Lambert.

“He’s a firefighter. A competent, respected member of this team, who has proven himself more than enough. Unlike you, Candidate,” Lambert hisses.

“I’ve proven myself long ago. You know what I can do!”

“As a soldier. But this isn’t Kaer Morhen, and you’re not a soldier anymore. You’re the candidate, the new guy, the lowest rung on the ladder. What you did before doesn’t matter to anyone here, and what Jaskier did before your time here doesn’t matter to you. Actually, anything before you came here doesn’t fucking matter. You don’t write, you don’t call – not a peep from you for, what, ten fucking years? So much for that fabled brotherhood of the Wolves. Don’t think you can just pick up where we left off because you used to be Vesemir’s golden boy and he’s still got a soft spot for you.”

Geralt should back off. Lambert is angry. Sure, Lambert is almost always angry, but it looks like he’s managed to hit a soft spot or two, and the last thing he needs right now is to start a fight with one of the people who literally welcomed him into the team with open arms. But Geralt has his soft spots, too, and Lambert put his finger right on the bruise Vesemir just left on him. So he hits back.

“You are the ones who left!”

Lambert jumps up, kit clattering to the ground, and gets all up in his face. Geralt’s fists clench tighter, nails digging into the flesh of his palms, and he tries to ground himself on those pinpricks of pain.

“We asked you to come with us! We asked you to leave with us, after the massacre, but you refused. Too proud of being the perfect soldier, too full of yourself to walk away and start again from the bottom elsewhere, and you are still too proud now!”

Fuck that. All Geralt has been doing since Yen left is swallow his pride, so much he’s all but choking on it. How is that not obvious? “Why am I here, then?”

“I don’t know. But the way you walk in here, no explanation, don’t even stop to ask if there’s a place at this table for you, and look down on someone who _has_ earned his place here? You were an arrogant, judgmental piece of work then, and you still are now.”

There is so much anger in Lambert’s voice, so much weight resting on the tense line of his shoulders, and Geralt doesn’t get how they got here.

“Lambert, all I did was call Jaskier weird. And he is!” He is! “If he isn’t talking, he’s making some kind of other noise, and the way he moves, with the, the,” he waves his hands about,” and he works out in pink yoga pants, like some fucking—“

Lambert doesn’t hit him. He steps back, away from Geralt, and that shocks him into shutting up more effectively than a punch ever could have.

“Careful, Wolf, you are on very thin ice here, “Lambert says, quiet and deathly calm in the way he never is. Never, except for when things are about to go south and it’s kill or be killed. “This isn’t ten years ago in Kaer Morhen, and that homophobic, toxic masculinity bullshit won’t fly here anymore.”

His words are dripping with bitterness and hate, years, decades worth of it, and it starts to make an ugly, ugly sort of sense what the conversation is actually about, what Lambert thinks Geralt is saying when he says _weird_ , and why Lambert, with his mysterious long-term girlfriend back then, whose name he didn’t share, of whom he kept no pictures, and with whom he somehow only ever spoke on the phone when no one else was around, might take it so personally.

“Lambert.” Geralt tries to swallow, mouth suddenly dry. “I. You know I didn’t mean it like that. I didn’t mean any of it like that. When I… those were jokes. They were always just jokes.” Bad, immature, crude jokes, but they were immature, crude men, barely more than boys, following orders from one bad situation into the next.

“It’s never been _just jokes_ , Geralt. It’s microaggressions at best, and often plain and simple harassment. Grow up and emotionally mature, like the rest of us.”

With that, Lambert backs of. He says the most relatable thing Geralt has heard all day, “Fuck it, I wanna hit something. I’m in the gym,” and walks away, leaving behind Geralt, Eskel, and his abandoned gear.

Geralt has even less of an idea what to do now than he did when he left Vesemir’s office earlier, so when Eskel pats the bench next to him, Geralt follows his unspoken invitation and sits his ass down. Eskel drops Lambert’s kit in his lap, and, for a couple of minutes, that’s all they are doing, sitting, cleaning, and processing.

It’s Eskel who breaks the silence.

“Lambert is out now, you know.” He doesn’t look up from where he is aggressively rubbing brushing at dry, caked-in dirt on his turnout coat, the short, even strokes setting the rhythm for his words. “We all said and did some shit back then because that’s just what everybody did, but it must have been tough for him, swallowing all of that crap and keeping this hidden from us all those years.”

“He could have told us. We were friends. We were brothers in all but name, Eskel!” They lived together, fought together, died together! “He could have told us.”

Eskel still won’t look up, though. “No, Geralt, he really, really couldn’t have. Not with the jokes, the comments, the insinuations and insults. Not with the way anyone who stood out the wrong way was fair game. He couldn’t have trusted us to have his back.” Geralt thinks Eskel may be ashamed.

He wants to object to that, wants to defend their past selves, wants to explain that he would have, _he would have_ , but he can’t know that, can he? Not when he’s wondered himself, sometimes, and always taken care to not linger too long on the thoughts because wondering is easier than knowing. Not when those who have the most to hide often yell the loudest and throw the first stone, a deflection, a distraction, a preventive defense, _better him than me_.

No, Lambert couldn’t have.

Geralt thinks he himself is ashamed.

“When Vesemir returned to LAFD, and took over this house, he filled it with people he knew, personally, hearsay, or from where they’ve been in life ,” Eskel continues. “Firefighting traditionally isn’t all that open-minded, and this place was almost as bad as Kaer Morhen. Most of us come from backgrounds rampant with at least casual homophobia, be it sports, the military, or something else.” Geralt nods. Any more of them, and Vesemir would be running an army retirement center.

“You really wanna know what Jaskier did that got Lambert in his corner?”

Eskel glances up at him, and Geralt uses the opportunity to try and lighten the mood because right now he really needs something to still be easy.

“Edible food?”

Eskel cracks a smile, a quick, amused little thing that pulls at his scars, and it settles something in Geralt. It’ll be okay.

“We are in LA now, not Kaer Morhen. These days, we can just order take-out.” They settle back on the bench, side by side, arms occasionally brushing as they work. “Jaskier was last year’s candidate, so he’s been here a year longer than you. Fresh from the academy, and before that college. Loud, enthusiastic, painfully green, and not like anybody else in the house. We didn’t know what to make of him any more than you do, to be honest, and we did what you always do with a newbie you want to take the measure of: we pushed as much grunt work on him as we could, to see if he’d bear up or break under the pressure. And we needled. Nothing too far, just… well, _just jokes_ ,” Eskel echoes Geralt’s earlier words and smiles again, sadly this time.

“I don’t even remember what it was that set him off. He was cooking, we were sitting around the tables watching him work, shooting the shit. Someone did something or told him to do something, and he just. Stopped. Didn’t snap; you could tell he knew exactly what he was doing. Dropped this huge fucking knife onto the cutting board tip-down so it stuck in the wood, and that sound of the knife hitting the board is what got everybody’s attention. He looked around the room, made sure everybody was watching him, and then said _that’s biphobic, and discrimination based on one’s sexuality is against LAFD guidelines_. And, sure, there’d been comments, and locker room talk, but no one actually explicitly said anything to his face, or he to us, so someone, one of the Vipers I think, said that we hadn’t even known he was bi up until just then, so we couldn’t have been biphobic. And he just grins, says _true, but now you do, so the next time you open your mouth for a clever remark, or to tell me to do something that I might perhaps consider to be outside of the scope of my responsibilities, always ask yourself: if I went to HQ and told them what you said, is there a chance they would side with me and send you to one of those fun sensitivity seminars?_ Then he looked all of us over once more, then over to the Captain’s office, where Vesemir had been standing in the doorway watching since who knows how long, and pulled the knife out of the board and went back to his food as is nothing had happened.”

Eskel pauses, and Geralt has to admit that he’s impressed. Rumors can be ignored or denied, but to out himself in what must have been at least a questionably hostile environment, in a job where people not having your six can leave you seriously injured or worse? Jaskier must carry around balls of steel in his tight pink leggings.

“Anyway, Lambert came out a month later, once it was clear that Vesemir was serious about changing the tone around here. Jaskier gave him that. And words like toxic masculinity. I’m pretty sure that, in Lambert’s book, you could pull him out of the fire a hundred times over, and Jaskier standing up here and letting Lambert know that he would not lose his friends and job over whom he loves would still rank higher.”

Eskel smirks. “Plus, Jaskier is petty, and good at influencing people. Make an effort, Geralt.”

“Yes, Jaskier could be turning Renfri, who threw her coffee in my face when she saw me in here, against me right now. Whatever shall I do.”

He digs his elbow into Eskel’s side. Eskel grins, and pushes right back.

“You are supposed to find common ground with a co-worker, Geralt.”

“Yesterday, there were four snails in my salad. That I found. No one else had that problem.”

“I did say he’s petty. But, please, try to give him a chance. For all our sakes.”

“What am I supposed to do, then? Huh, Eskel, what do you want me to say?” Geralt doesn’t get it. As nice as Eskel’s speech was, he has heard the way the guys, including and especially Lambert and Jaskier, talk, and the firehouse is definitely _not_ a politically correct utopia. So he doesn’t get it. It’s stupid, it’s frustrating, it’s unfair, it’s him getting jerked about when he’s got more important things going on, and he wants a clear answer he can make sense of. “From where I stand, the joking you do around here looks pretty damn similar to what we used to say back in the army, so how come I’m the bad guy here?”

“Oh, Geralt.” Eskel’s body shifts beside him, trying to catch his eye, but Geralt stubbornly glares at his hands and the gear he is working on. He has left himself vulnerable enough, and to look at Eskel now would be too much.

“There’s a line between joking with someone and joking about someone. It’s a fine line, and sometimes you can only see it when you look at it from the right angle. But a lot of it has got to do with knowing where you stand with each other, what everybody’s intentions and boundaries are, and that they’ll be respected when it comes down to it.” Eskel pauses, and a contemplative silence rises between them. “That place at the table Lambert was talking about? You can start by sitting on the other side of the table and leaving the chair closest to the kitchenette for Jaskier. If he is graciously taking over your kitchen duties, you might at least not make him have to go around the table every time he needs to check on his pots and pans.”

“Mh.” It’s… a good suggestion. It’s clear, concrete, and Geralt can make sense of it.

“I see we have reached an agreement. And now, Candidate, put away Lambert’s gear and start cleaning the truck. Letho is watching, and you do want to make a good impression, don’t you?”

“Fuck.”

Eskel snorts and pushes his own gear into Geralt’s arms to clear away before shoving him off the bench. He goes willingly.

When it comes down to it, all he needs is to get the lay of the land. Until then, he’ll keep his head down and do his job, and he’ll be fine.

Going to Eskel for advice was the right decision.

Coming here was the right decision.

Before dinner that night, he sits down on the other side of the table, with his back to the entrance. The vulnerable spot between his shoulder blades itches at this choice, but he ignores the desire to change seats and pulls out his phone, checking in with Ciri. He can count himself lucky that she’s a good kid and can take care of herself, but he doesn’t like having to leave her alone for so long after school.

Jaskier throws him a highly suspicious look when he wanders in the next time and sees were Geralt has chosen to not sit, but Geralt just nods at him and goes back to his phone. Before Jaskier sits himself down, he pulls the chair out all the way and eyes it critically, but when he finally sinks down he gives a little sigh, and Geralt can see that he positions himself so that he can talk to Eskel and Lambert (and, in theory, Geralt, but so far they have successfully managed to avoid all but the most basic conversation despite sharing a table every meal) and at the same time keep an eye on the kitchen.

There’s nothing wrong with his food that night. He even takes some leftovers home, for Ciri.

  1. Jaskier



_Srrrrrsht_!

The sound of ripping fabric resonates through the men’s locker room, and Jaskier’s head snaps up, looking for the source like a child who has just heard the siren call of the ice-cream truck.

There! Eskel stands, caught in the torn remains of the shirt he was just trying to force his unfairly muscled upper body into, and sheepishly glances at Jaskier over his shoulder.

Beaming, Jaskier does as is expected of him at this point in the proceedings; he clucks his tongue, skips over to the board hung by the door, and adds a shiny gold star sticker to the column next to Eskel’s name under the applause of his team mates. Eskel is not in the lead, but it’s a tight (ha!) race between him and Letho that could still go either way. Jaskier hasn’t decided yet what the winner will get this year, but he has looked into body painting, just because. Can’t pop _those_ seams.

“It must have shrunken in the wash?”

It’s a blatant lie, and they all know it. Jaskier shakes his head at Eskel, disappointed at this weak, uncreative attempt at an excuse. Letho claimed sabotage of his seams the last time, and Jaskier had half a mind to believe him – something about Lambert looking not remotely gleeful enough.

“Honestly, I have no idea why the lot of you insist on wearing shirts so tight they can’t contain your magnificence. Not that it’s not a sight – truly, Eskel, you are a veritable miracle of nature – but don’t you want to be able to _move_?”

Lambert snorts. “As if you’re one to talk, Buttercup. We’ve seen what you wear when there’s no dress code, and those buttons should get hazard pay.”

“Ah, but I do always dress for the occasion!” He shimmies into his own, much more comfortable-fitting LADF-issue shirt with ease, then gives a wide-armed bow to make his point. “Flexibility for when I’m about to run into burning buildings, and there is nothing wrong with a well-tailored dress shirt when outside of work. Quite the opposite: I can nicely adjust to different activities and temperatures – and audiences – by rolling up my sleeves and undoing the topmost buttons.”

“Jaskier, you are so fuzzy, I doubt even a neckline down to your belt would manage to get you cooled down.”

“Never said it was _my_ temperature getting regulated, darling.” Lambert, who, Jaskier knows, does in fact appreciate a generously hirsute chest, turns a fetching shade of red, and he grins. “See, you are looking warmer already!”

He is rewarded with a round of cut-off chuckles and fake coughs, there’s even a suspicious muffled sound from over at the ladies’. All in all, Jaskier is justifiably pleased with himself, right up until people start filing out of the room and Geralt walks past, wearing a vaguely tortured stony expression to match his Greek statue look.

It’s like being doused in cold water. Cold, dirty water.

Jaskier loves what he has here, in this job he never expected to end up in, with people he never thought he’d end up calling his friends. But then Geralt arrived. There have been stretches of time, these last weeks, when he thought it was getting better. However, they are always, inevitably, followed by moments like this, and Jaskier isn’t convinced this particular sandwich will fall PBJ-side up for him. Should have known better than to expect a good thing to last.

He turns back to his locker, pulls out the rest of his stuff, and shuts the door with maybe a little bit more force than absolutely necessary. A tad. A smidgeon.

“Hey,” Lambert says, a hand on his shoulder. “You okay?”

A lot more force than necessary.

“Fine.”

“Uh-huh, you look it.” And then, because he is Lambert: “Eskel! Jaskier needs handholding; do your job!” He pats Jaskier on the back, letting the touch longer for a moment, and then steps out, leaving Jaskier and Eskel alone for another one of those serious, awkward interpersonal talks that everybody always seems to foist off onto him.

Eskel has probably made his lieutenancy solely on the back of these talks.

The man in question closes the locker room door, giving them some privacy.

“It’s not about you.”

It’s as weak an opener as the shrunken shirt was as an excuse, and, quite honestly, Jaskier doesn’t feel like his hand is being adequately held.

“It feels like it’s about me!” Once he starts, he finds he can’t stop. “So he isn’t going to be my new best friend, boohoo. I’m a big boy, I can handle that. But no one else keeps getting the evil eye like that-“

“That’s just how his face looks naturally.”

“-and he avoids me. He won’t enter the gym if I’m in there, he’ll just happen to have to leave a conversation - and don’t try to tell me he doesn’t have them, I’ve watched him-“

“You watch him? Maybe this conversation _should_ be about you!”

Eskel cracks a smile at him, but Jaskier doesn’t feel like clowning around anymore.

“-and he may not be a Chatty Kathy, but he talks just fine with you guys, and even smiles! So how, pray tell, is it not about me?”

There, outburst done, weight lifted. Chest heaving, he stands and looks at Eskel, waiting, imploring him to disprove him.

“He’s just not used to jokes like this,” Eskel tries to appease him, “not the friendly kind, at least. But he’s a good guy, Jaskier.”

“Ohoh!” Oh, no! “No, no, no, no! I have heard that one before!” From his parents, from his teachers, from Valdo.

“Jaskier, that’s not-“

“ _Don’t blame the other children, Jaskier, you are just a lot to handle, why don’t you dial it back a bit, lock away pieces of you, pretend to be_ -“ He can’t. No. His eyes burn, and he pushes back against that old darkness and clings to his anger instead. He could, but he won't. He _refuses_. And screw anyone who would ask him to! They don’t want him? They don’t deserve him! They are ungrateful philistines who don’t deserve him! How dare Eskel ask this of him!

**“Jaskier! I said it’s not about you!”**

Eskel…

Eskel wouldn’t ask this of him.

Eskel, his lieutenant, his _friend_ , steps in close and draws Jaskier in with a hand at the back of his neck, until his head, his heavy, weary, head, rests on Eskel’s shoulder. Slowly, the angry pounding begins to recede.

Eventually, he rolls his face to the side, huffing a sigh against Eskel’s neck in an unspoken announcement that he’s ready for Eskel, this saint among men, or at least this man with the patience of a saint, to be putting up with the lot of them without complaint, to continue.

“Look, Geralt… takes a while to warm up to people.” Eskel’s words come halting, careful, as if he’s weighing them in his mind before he lets them free.

“Change doesn’t come easy to Geralt. And he was in the army for a long time. He took to it, identified with it, more than the most of us, I think. He stayed on, even after Kaer Morhen, when the rest of us decided we couldn’t take it anymore. But now, because of circumstances that were out of his control, he had to quit and find something new. That’s a big adjustment, and Geralt doesn’t like feeling out of control. **”**

Jaskier hums. That does sound like something that might leave a man floundering.

“Lambert and I, Coen, the Vipers, we were there, we are familiar, and we know where he comes from. Even Téa and Véa – we’ve all got a similar background. He doesn’t need to find his footing with us. He knows what to make of us, and that we know what to make of him. But you, he is starting from scratch with.”

Eskel prods him, and Jaskier sighs.

“I guess,” he concedes, and contemplates whether or not he is ready to remove his forehead from its comfortable resting spot on Eskel’s very nice shoulder when the alarm goes off and makes the decision for him. Time to get back to work. With a groan, he untangles himself from Eskel and bends down to put on his shoes.

“Just give it time,” Eskel says, and does that little patting down of his pockets he always does before leaving the locker room, checking that he has in fact locked his keys, wallet, and phone away. No private distractions for Eskel while on duty; everybody else’s issues are probably distraction enough for him.

“Anyway, you know what you are doing. Geralt will respect that, once he sees it.” Eskel slaps him on the back and opens the door in one smooth motion, using the hand still on Jaskier’s back to push him out into the hallway and towards the garage. “Who knows, he might become your new best friend after all!”

Jaskier all but walks into Lambert, all kitted up and waving them on, who gauges their mood with one look and must decide all is well again, because he opens his rude mouth and adds, “what Eskel means by this is you’ll grow on Geralt. Like a fungus.”

The call they drive out to ends up being an actual fire for once – Jaskier is still astonished how much of a firefighter’s work doesn’t include even the smallest of flames but rather technical and general assistance. Still, he might have gone into firefighting full of naïve ignorance, looking for action and heroics to finally inspire some original works to further his musical aspirations, but he has since learned to appreciate the job for what it is. Sometimes tedious, often dirty and exhausting, but rewarding and _real_ in a way nothing else in his life has ever been, and at this point he wouldn’t give it up even if someone offered him that record deal. And for the times when he wants to dress up and strut around a stage with a microphone, well, there’s always karaoke.

From the looks of it, it’s a simple enough call. Smallish apartment building, three stories, a handful of flats probably mostly empty at this time of day, and a barbecue on the roof gone bad. The fire is merrily smoldering away, slowly working its way into the building, and there’s quite a bit of smoke, but the failed cooks have already evacuated the roof via the fire escape, and clearing a building below the fire line is always easier than when the flames are moving up, the only way out is through, and you risk getting cut off from your exit route.

But fire is fire, smoke is smoke, and Vesemir divvies them up into groups to set to work. Eskel and Renfri on the roof, to assess and contain, Auckes and Letho on ladder and hose, the rest of them through the building in teams of two, checking for fire, heat, and smoke (which is definitely wafting out of that partially opened window up there and probably all over the third floor), and to clear the building.

“Jaskier, take Geralt. Ground floor.”

Vesemir turns away to watch Eskel and Renfri’s progress before Jaskier can object, and, really, it makes sense. The ground floor is the simplest assignment, furthest from the source of the fire and easy to get in and out if need be, so, if Vesemir wants to pair his least experienced firefighter with the candidate for teambuilding purposes, it’s the best place for them to go. Besides, Jaskier knows better than to complain about his orders to his captain’s face, in front of the team, while they are out on a call. If he wants to complain, he’ll do that privately, after the call, to Lambert (if he wants to vent) or Eskel (if he really has a problem and wants Eskel to sort it out or bring it up with Vesemir).

Nothing to it for now. Jaskier zips up his turnout coat, puts on his tools, breathing apparatus, and helmet, rechecks his buckles long enough waits for Geralt to finish kitting up so he can check him over with a critical eye because the candidate will not die of smoke inhalation on his watch, then puts on his own mask and gloves and gets going, waving at Geralt to follow him.

They get into the building just fine, with the doors unlocked and open, but a faint haze of smoke hangs in the air of the hallway and the high, piercing beeps of several smoke detectors echoes through the floor. Damn. Probably coming down from the roof or third floor through some vents. Fingers crossed that the smoke is all that’s moving through the house and they aren’t going to be met by sparks piggybacking through the ventilation or a secondary fire that found some nice, flammable insulation and decided to branch off from the original source and travel through the walls.

He stands before Geralt.

“You clear the places on this side, I’ll take the left. We check in with each other after each flat. If you find someone who needs escorting out, tell me. Neither of us goes anywhere without letting the other know. Clear?”

It’s impossible to get a read on Geralt, not with the helmet and mask, but he at least nods before he turns and moves to the first door on his side of the hallway.

Jaskier’ll take it.

He watches as Geralt knocks on the door and announces himself with the mandatory call of “Fire department!” It’s unlikely that someone would hear their calls but not the incessant cries of the smoke detectors, if someone is even home, but people might still be staying in their flats with the doors closed, unsure of what to do and in need of instructions. Still, no one answers, and Geralt reaches for his Halligan to force open the door.

Good.

Satisfied that Geralt has things in hand, Jaskier leaves him be and turns to his own side of flats, knocking on the first door and calling out.

No one answers him either, so Jaskier pries open the door and steps into the flat.

“Fire department, call out!”

The place looks empty, deserted for the day, and the air seems clear at first, but soon smoke drifts in from the hallway and sets off the smoke detector in here, too. Jaskier tries to ignore the noise while he does a quick, efficient tour of the flat. He checks underneath the kitchen and end tables, in the gap between the dresser and armchair, and behind the sofa, sweeps the bedrooms and looks under the beds and desks, looks inside the bathtub and the shower stall, and through it all calls out again and again. Then, when he’s sure there is no one inside, he goes back out into the hallway, where Geralt is already waiting for him down the hall in front of the next door, Halligan in hand and ready to break down the door.

He did have a head start on that first flat. And, Jaskier reminds himself and tamps down on the urge to do better with this flat so he’ll win at firefighting over Geralt, it’s not a race. They are doing their job here.

To the door, knocking, calling. Halligan, inside. It’s the same as the last one, but before Jaskier can move from the main area to check the adjoining rooms, he catches movement in the hallway.

People are idiots, and someone might have snuck past his teammates outside into a burning building to get to their home, or to take the opportunity and loot, so he leaves the flat for now and goes back outside, where… Geralt is already walking towards the next door.

Jaskier frowns.

That does seem awfully fast.

He hurries after him, throwing a quick look into the flat Geralt just left, just in case – nope, same layout as on Jaskier’s side, main room, kitchen, several doors, furniture and possible hiding spots everywhere.

“Geralt!” A couple of quick steps, and he has caught up to the other man and stops him with a heavy, gloved hand on his shoulder. “You have to clear the rooms.”

Geralt’s head moves a bit, as if he’s looking down at Jaskier’s hand on him – stupid mask, Jaskier can’t make out anything that’s going on underneath it – then he nods again, the way he did earlier, and moves to turn away.

Fuck that shit.

Jaskier may not have arms like tree trunks but he isn’t exactly a weakling either, so he holds on and yanks where Geralt clearly expects him to let to.

It is satisfying, the way Geralt stumbles as he’s swung around in full kit, and has to catch his balance before Jaskier. But they are on a call, this is not the time nor the place for a pissing contest, and, anyway, the hierarchy here is clear.

“I gave you an order, Candidate,” he says, “and I expect a verbal reply. I told you to _clear the rooms_.”

“I did.”

It’s such a simple, confident statement, but so clearly untrue unless Geralt has, like, super speed, and Jaskier wants to throw up his arms in frustration, but his gear is too heavy for that kind of unnecessary movement. He’ll do it later.

“You did not.”

“I called,” Geralt says, “no one answered.”

Full stop, end of report, and it swans on Jaskier that this is not, in fact, Geralt fudging the job because he is being competitive and wants to clear his side of the hallway faster than Jaskier, but something deeper, and Geralt’s confidence might actually be the same self-assured naïveté that once had Jaskier tell his father that he’d become a successful pop star after college.

Okay.

The smoke detectors keep blaring, the hallway is slowly but surely filling up with smoke, and Jaskier does not exactly want to dawdle here, but he does stay, takes a couple of deep breaths, and tries to figure out what the issue is here. This needs to be resolved, Jaskier needs to make Geralt understand what the problem is, or he might as well clear the entire floor alone.

Geralt shifts before him, maybe under the uncomfortable weight of either his kit or Jaskier’s disapproval, but more likely with the impatience to get back to work, but it’s fine; Jaskier has got his theory. Army. Has trouble adjusting. Used to things being a certain way.

“Okay,” he starts, “we are in a rush, and in a situation like this I expect you to do as I say, but I can tell this is going to be our make-it-or-break-it moment, and since I’d rather we make it I’ll take the time to explain myself and just talk fast. Do keep up.”

Geralt nods again, a surprised jerk of his head. It’s not the verbal response Jaskier has requested earlier, but at least he’s got his attention, and a surprised nod might be better than an unwilling reply, so he continues.

“Now, Geralt, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and assume that, in all your previous experiences searching for people in whose best interest it was to be found by you, they were tough soldier-types, fighting-fit and trained to not panic and freeze in the face of danger. Am I correct? Indicate yes or no.”

Geralt nods again, the movement a bit more certain, as if he’s still not sure what Jaskier is getting at, but at least he’s realized that he is going _somewhere_ with this. Hallelujah, looks like they are finally making some progress here.

“Well, then I’m sorry, but I’ll have to burst your bubble: You can’t trust people to aid in their own rescue. You can’t even trust them to cooperate in their own rescue. When I tell you to check a room, you need to go in, call out, and then search it even if you think there is no way someone might already have lost consciousness. Someone might have fallen in the bathtub and lost consciousness, be frozen in fear behind a desk, or hiding deliberately because they want to destroy their porn collection before they evacuate the building. Understood?”

Geralt nods again, taciturn bastard, but it’s a firm nod, they are on a roll here, and, while Jaskier has him this cooperative, he’ll hammer than into his head, too. “Verbal response, please.”

“Understood,” Geralt says, and it’s the sweetest sound Jaskier has heard all day (since Eskel’s shirt surrendered). Angels weep. Fireworks go off. Ah, no, just an overhead light going up in sparks. Back to work it is.

“Good. We’ll go back, start from the beginning. Come on.”

“Yes, Jaskier,” Geralt says, wonderfully obedient, and falls into step behind Jaskier.

The first pair of flats remains clear. Same with the second, and third. It’s after checking his last flat, at the end of the hallway, that Jaskier steps back outside and Geralt joins him with a child in his arms, face buried in his chest and skinny arms locked tight around his neck. A boy, old enough to be left home alone for stretches of time, young enough that it’s no surprise that he hunkered down in familiar surroundings when the alarms started going off rather than exit the building.

Jaskier still can’t see what Geralt’s face is doing, but he’d bet his favorite guitar that it’s definitely doing something.

“We’ve got one, Captain, a child. Coming out now,” he radios in, and ushers Geralt, who bends low over the kid to protect him from the smoke and the occasional spark from above, back up the hallway and outside.

Triss takes charge of the boy, once they’ve cleared the building. She’s better with people than Chireadan, so Jaskier leaves her to it and checks over his temporary partner, who does seem a bit out of breath, once he pulls off his mask.

Fuck.

It wasn’t that bad, inside, but equipment can always malfunction, they did spend quite some time in that hallway, and smoke can be tricky.

Geralt drops first his mask, then his helmet to the ground, and the clutter draws Vesemir over to them.

“Hey, Geralt, buddy? Slow breaths, yeah, easy now. We’ll have Chireadan take a look at you, okay?”

Jaskier pulls off his gloves, then helps Geralt take off his breathing apparatus, his own gloves, opens his coat for him when Geralt fumbles with the zipper. He’s pale, and shaky, and it’s honestly a bit worrying now, but when Jaskier tries to guide him over to the ambulance, Vesemir steps up to them and shakes his head, pulling Jaskier back.

“Give him space, Jaskier.”

And, oh. Yeah. That’d do it. He’d thought, what with Geralt’s background… but he is still new at this, and Jaskier remembers how shaken he was the first few times things got serious, the first few times he screwed up (or almost screwed up – that’s why they go in pairs) and, yeah, that’d do it.

He follows Vesemir’s lead, since he is both the captain and knows Geralt a lot better than him. They end up putting themselves between Geralt and the inevitable onlookers further down the street, far enough away from the fire to feel safe, close enough to satisfy their curiosity, and try to act as unobtrusive shields, both of them doing their best to keep an eye on Geralt while not making it too obvious that they are watching him have a breakdown.

The man in questions turns out to be grasping for his phone, pulling it out of an inside pocket. He prods at the screen with a shaking finger and then holds the phone close to his face, clenched in a tight grip, chest heaving with laborious breaths.

Jaskier can’t hear when the person on the other end picks up, but he sees it in the slacking of Geralt’s face, in the way his shoulders fall.

“Ciri,” he rasps, and closes his eyes. There is a wealth of emotion in his voice that Jaskier doesn’t know what to do with.

“Ciri, are you… I know. I know you’re in class. Yes. Sorry.” Geralt is obviously getting brushed off by the person on the other line. It’s the best thing that could have happened, Jaskier thinks as he watches Geralt recenter himself. No reassurance that she is well could drag Geralt’s mind out of that flat, where he found a scared boy he almost would have walked by, as effectively as whatever tirade is coming through the speaker of his phone, driving home that Ciri is so far removed from what Geralt just went through that it’s not even on her radar that anything might be going on that’s worse than him calling in the middle of class.

Vesemir prods him, just a bit, and they step further away, giving Geralt his privacy now that he’s regained his composure.

“His daughter,” Vesemir tells him, “about the boy’s age.”

And, yeah, that _would_ do it.

Then Téa and Véa come out of the building with a spectacularly wizened senior citizen of indeterminate gender, something flashes up on the roof, Letho starts running the hose up the ladder to a lot of radio chatter from Eskel and Renfri, and everything is a bit busy for a while.

They do manage to put the fire out, in time. It dug in a little deeper than they’d hoped, and Jaskier does feel for all the people whose belongings they have left soaked, but no one is seriously injured, the victims who suffered smoke inhalation are en route to the hospital and LAPD is dealing with the failed grill masters. They are all dirty and sweaty when they finally pile back into the truck, but it was a good call, and everybody is okay.

Well, mostly. Geralt still looks less stony than his norm.

Ah. Fuck it. He’s a candidate, those do still need to learn and get concessions made for them. Besides, Geralt _has_ done good today, showing that he’s willing to listen to Jaskier and respect his lead, and Jaskier is a firm believer in rewarding good behavior. Positive reinforcement and all that.

“Oh Captain, my Captain!”

Vesemir visibly counts to ten before he answers, which, the cheek! As if Jaskier would ever do anything to strain his nerves!

“Jaskier?”

“Remember how you said you’d write me up if I ever hijacked the truck again just to see a girl?” Okay, so maybe he has, in the past, in the very distant past, a year ago, sometimes been a less than exemplary subordinate. But he will insist that he does not deserve this continued distrust.

“Mh.”

Vesemir gives him a look that says he isn’t sure what Jaskier is up to, but he disapproves as a precaution. Everybody else is paying attention now, too, and it occurs to Jaskier that maybe Geralt might not like his parental status made public knowledge.

“Well, what if it’s not _my_ girl we drive to see?”

He leaves it at that, carefully does not look at Geralt, and mentally prepares himself to fend off his teammates’ confused questions, but Geralt visibly perks up at that and turns uncharacteristically pleading eyes in Vesemir. If everybody knows whom this is about now, then it’s not Jaskier’s fault.

Geralt daughter turns out to be a middle schooler who most likely thinks her father is embarrassing. That’s all Jaskier learns, and the second part he only extrapolates from the message she sends when the truck stands in front of the school, sirens off but lights on, the one that has Geralt smile down at his phone, this small, relieved smile that’s really more the absence of the guilty, worried frown that’s been pulling at the corners of his mouth and digging furrows into the skin across his eyes than an actual, bona-fide smile.

Maybe Eskel was right and his face does just look like that.

Either way, Jaskier is feeling pretty good about himself, and even more so when Geralt comes up to him at the end of the shift, when they are about to pack up for the night, and initiates conversation. Without work (or circumstance, like e.g. the salt being at Jaskier’s end of the table) forcing him to, at that.

“Jaskier.”

“Yes, Geralt?” Is he going to get thanked? He so does enjoy it when people acknowledge his awesomeness!

“Next time, don’t bother explaining,” is what Geralt ends up saying. “Just tell me what to do.”

With that, he goes on to his locker, and Jaskier quickly scampers over to his own, to quietly fist pump behind the protection of its door.

Ha, he _knew_ it would be a thank-you speech! Finally he is being appreciated as he deserves, and soon-

_Srrrrrsht_!

Twice in one day! He pops up from behind his locker door, searching for the culprit. Eskel, Letho? No. Lambert? No, not him either. Maybe…

…Ah.

Geralt.

Not entirely unexpected, seeing as the main difference between Eskel and Geralt’s bodies seem to be the coloring and a different set of scars, but it is awkward. He glances over at Lambert, but only gets a shrug in return.

They were doing so good earlier, Jaskier doesn’t want to ruin that! Maybe he should just ignore it? But everybody has heard, everybody has seen, and ignoring the ripped shirt in Geralt’s hands would be as much of a statement as going with their usual routine.

He pulls his lip between his teeth.

Besides, wouldn’t excluding Geralt from the torn shirt context not be uncompanionable? Singling him out?

It’s Geralt himself clearing his throat that pulls him out of his misery.

“So, what exactly am I in the running for now?” He gestures at the board with the stickers.

Jaskier smiles at him, so wide that his cheeks hurt. “Haven’t decided yet,” he says, and walks over to the board. “It’s the taking part that counts!”

With great ceremony, he adds Geralt’s name to the bottom of the list, and puts a first glittery sticker next to it.

  1. Geralt



When Geralt comes back into the house, decidedly _not_ running, he finds Ciri not still crying in the bathroom where she had locked herself in when it turned out that she wasn’t sick but indisposed, waiting for him to return from his drugstore run with a selection of feminine hygiene products for her to choose from. No, she’s in the kitchen, looking unexpectedly happy and hale, mixing something in a bowl while Jaskier oversees.

Eskel sidles up to him.

“The ambulance came back, so he recruited Triss into providing a pad, including instructions and some moral support. There was a slight hiccup when Triss tried to tell her the female body was something beautiful to be cherished and celebrated when the kid feels like crap and is mad at the unfairness of having to deal with this every four weeks now for the next couple of decades. I hope you don’t mind your child watching gore and splatter movies, because from now on there’s a ritualistic theme night every month. Thus the red velvet cake, and the teen zombie movie you’ll be watching later. Enjoy.”

Geralt shifts the bag with his bounty from hand to hand, unsure if he should hand it over out here in the open of if that would be embarrassing. “They make teen zombie movies?”

“Oh yes. Even teen zombie musicals! Guess who happened to know and suggest that?”

Across the room, Ciri pours something that looks like thickened blood into a cake tin, puts the tin into the oven, the door of which Jaskier is holding open for her, and then straightens to proudly beam at Jaskier. Geralt does a quick mental calculation of _technically a woman now_ and _smiles at male person_ and sees a future ahead of himself that would turn his hair grey if it weren’t white already.

“Please tell me Jaskier wasn’t flirting with my teenaged daughter while I was out,” he groans. He is not ready for a lovesick teenager.

Eskel frowns at him, a wary slant to the unscarred side of his face, and Geralt tears his mind away from visions of Ciri sighing directly at boys (or girls) rather than sighing only at photos of boys (or girls) in the safety of her room, and recaps what he just said that made Eskel look at him like that.

Oh. Maybe not the best way to phrase his concerns. He waves Eskel off. “Down, Wolf, I didn’t mean it like that. I do remember the lecture on being personable and putting people at ease versus serious flirting, and the one on the rules of who is or is not an appropriate target for one’s amorous intentions. I just meant that the last thing I need right now is for Ciri to develop a crush on my co-worker, or anyone else we know, rather than a safe, unattainable celebrity.”

“Well,” Eskel ponders, “he _is_ a singer. With smooth cheeks, soft-looking boyband hair, and the kind of unthreatening air most of those teen idols seem to have.”

“Don’t even go there.” Geralt aims a glare at him that quickly turns into a grin. He’s just glad of the familiar teasing, after the worry earlier when Ciri’s school had called and asked him to come pick her up.

“In all seriousness, though,” Eskel begins, and carefully turns them away from the kitchen area, “You weren’t here when Jaskier was actually making good use of all of those rules of his, and, yes, he was… let’s be diplomatic and say a social butterfly, but at this point I’d be almost relieved if he got serious about his flirting again.”

Geralt quirks a brow and waits for Eskel to continue. He wouldn’t have brought this up if he didn’t mean to tell Geralt.

“Don’t make me regret telling you this. It’s a sore topic, and you won’t tease him about it or Lambert is going to make you regret it.”

“Well, if you are threatening me with Lambert…” Eskel just looks at him, and Geralt nods. This is one of those serious, emotionally mature conversations that keep happening to him, he gets it.

“It’s simple, really. He fell in love. Went from flighty commitment-phobe all about that rush of excitement of meeting someone new to talking about moving in together with his boyfriend within a week. It. Didn’t end well, let’s leave it at that. Coincidentally, if some guy named Valdo ever calls the firehouse, or shows up here, don’t let him anywhere near Jaskier. Best also don’t let Lambert anywhere near Valdo, if you want to avoid Triss and Chireadan having to deal with an emergency in our own house.”

“Ah, you know Lambert. All bark and no bite.” Plus, it’s always fun to watch him go off on someone, as long as Geralt is staying out of the blast radius.

“No, seriously, Geralt. You wanted to know why Jaskier sometimes lies on the ground, in the rain, singing his heart out. I’m telling you, it did _not_ end well.”

Geralt winces, remembering the time he did mock Jaskier’s lying in the rain in front of Lambert. That particular explosion is not an experience he wants to repeat. No Valdo, no teasing about Valdo, check.

“Actually, now that I think about it,” Eskel begins, and Geralt braces himself for what else Eskel can add on to this, “I was going to suggest you outsource that particular parental talk and have let Jaskier give Ciri the lecture on appropriate targets for one’s intentions, too, but maybe his judgement isn’t the best in that regard.”

It’s now that Geralt sees the twinkle in Eskel’s eye. Oh, Eskel knows exactly what he just did, and sometimes Geralt wonders why they always say Lambert is the asshole of the group.

No, he knows why. Because it’s fun to rag on him.

“Mh, true. The fact that he has admitted to that thing with Lambert doesn’t really speak for a very discerning taste in bed partners. I mean, fucking Lambert?”

“And why not fucking Lambert?” Jaskier’s voice pipes in from behind them, and they both jump a foot in the air, startled. Mighty Wolves they are, not even noticing someone as loud as Jaskier sneaking up on them. Geralt tries to exchange a nervous look with Eskel, wondering how much Jaskier has heard, but the object of their previous conversation seems unperturbed. He blithely reaches between them, oblivious to the ruckus he has caused, and tears the bag from the drug store out of Geralt’s hand.

“Oooh, that’s a nice selection. Well done. **Ciri, love** ,” he hollers into Geralt’s ear, “ **your options are here!** ”

Ciri just waves at them from where she’s having a staring contest with a squash, and Jaskier, apparently satisfied with that reply, shrugs and drops the bag on the table before seamlessly picking the thread back up.

“Why _not_ Lambert? Sure, you lot have that weird pseudo-brotherly thing going on, but I’ll have you know he is both immensely fuckable and highly skilled at fucking. Besides, he’s got the only functional relationship in this house, doesn’t he? We should all strive for what Lambert has.”

What does Lambert have? “A long-distance relationship with a significant other he only sees once a year?” Geralt had one of those. He loved Yen dearly, probably always will, but he knows theirs was not the kind of relationship anyone should try to emulate and it only lasted as long as it did because they tacitly stepped around each other’s issues until everything they’d pushed aside came crashing down on them.

“A kinky night where he gets fucked by the twinky new co-worker on the boyfriend’s orders?”

Jaskier laughs, loud and delighted, head thrown back and the line of his throat bared. Geralt decidedly does not want to think about Jaskier and Lambert having sex, but he has caught on that the fabled threesome with the mysterious boyfriend went from a private event that only two people in the house attended to everybody’s favorite inside joke. They have no idea what happened, so it could have been anything; they don’t even know if the boyfriend was physically present or not.

“Oh, hush you! I’m an otter, and you know it. Plus, it was a whole weekend.” He smirks at Geralt, leers, really, lecherously, but his eyes sparkle with mischief, skin crinkling with laugh lines at the corners. Clearly Jaskier, too, has caught on to the fact that his previous friends-with-benefits arrangement with Lambert (supposedly hinging on the agreement that neither of them would fall in love) is not Geralt’s favorite topic, but he’s so visibly enjoying himself that Geralt finds he doesn’t mind, not with the memory of Jaskier in the driveway of the firehouse, lying in the rain and nursing his broken heart, freshly pulled to the forefront of his mind.

“No, no. What I mean is, Lambert has something… safe. Something warm, and full of acceptance. Someone who’ll lift you up when you’re feeling down, who’ll carry you when you don’t have the strength to keep going on your own, who sees your wants, your needs, even your flaws, and makes room for them because they are yours and he loves you, and you do the same for him.”

Jaskier flops down in a chair, chin propped in hand, and stares out across the room, eyes unfocussed and miles away.

The way he describes it, it sounds… nice, actually. If that’s how he sees it, it’s no wonder Jaskier doesn’t want to go back to going through lover after lover, constantly having to impress people who’ll judge him for one performance and, at most, stay for a second round in the morning.

Still.

He exchanges a look with Eskel, and in unison they open their mouths.

“Lambert?!?”

Jaskier snorts.

“The two of you are horrible people.”

Eskel tilts his head, contemplating this statement, and then shrugs. “I can live with that.” He pats Geralt’s back and tries to muss up Jaskier’s hair, but Jaskier ducks out of the way. “Call me when dinner is ready,” he says, and wanders off towards the gym.

Geralt should follow, get some exercise in, but it’s been a long day, and he finds he doesn’t want to move. He drops down in the seat next to Jaskier instead, and they sit quietly, watching the people around them read, chat, drink, and just pass the time.

“You know,” Jaskier starts, still staring at nothing and a strange tone to his voice, something Geralt thinks he has heard from him before but can’t quite identify, “it’s a mystery to me how this happened, since, as established, you are a horrible person, the absolute worst, a miserable grouch, and with questionable hygiene to boot!”

“Mh.” Geralt is mildly insulted, but Jaskier’s words aren’t entirely unjustified.

(Geralt has now been to the store thrice since he used up the last of his deodorant, each time only remembered that he’d meant to pick up a new one once he’d done his time in line and paid, and not cared enough to go back in because it was crowded and loud and he was tired and late and getting home to make dinner for Ciri was more important.

Jaskier gestures vaguely into the direction of the kitchen unit, where Ciri and Vesemir are taking a the-blind-leading-the-blind approach to preparing dinner, and Geralt uses the opportunity to surreptitiously sniff at his pit. Perhaps a quick shower every morning and evening is not actually an adequate substitute. The point it, Geralt is a hard-working single father, and sacrifices have to be made.

…He’ll nick Lambert’s can from the locker room later and take it home with him.)

“But,” Jaskier turns to him, the focus back in his eyes, and, oh, it’s earnestness, that thing in his voice, “your daughter is the most charming, delightful young girl I know.”

Geralt looks at Ciri, whose hair is in a messy ponytail that clearly hasn’t been brushed before being tied back, whose outfit, like most of her clothes, is kept in blacks and greys (and he has no idea if that’s an expression of grief she adopted after her grandmother died or something in which she took inspiration from Yen, because Geralt wasn’t there for her after her Calanthe’s death, he wasn’t there with her and Yen). She’s standing there with crossed arms, her body language closed off, and glares daggers at Vesemir trying to explain knife safety to her. Geralt remembers Vesemir’s lectures from Kaer Morhen and always considered him a good teacher, but a bunch of green but adult soldiers who have already been through basic training and have chosen to be where they are make for a more thankful audience than a barely teenaged girl who has lost almost every parental figure she ever had and is now left with an adoptive father who has abandoned her before. He loves her, Gods, he loves her so much, and he’ll try to make it up to her for the rest of his life, but there is nothing even remotely delightful about Ciri and the distrustful judgement wafting off her most of the time.

“Oh, don’t be like that.” Jaskier slaps his arm, thoughtlessly, casually, as if touching each other is a normal thing they do now, as if he put himself on the very exclusive list of people that get to touch Geralt for the sake of touching. Geralt can’t help but follow his hand with his eyes when he draws it back, trace the movements of his fingers as he flaps them about in accompaniment of his words, and find that, yes, Jaskier is on the list.

“Look, I know you two are still… working things out, what with Ciri’s gran and your ex, but, seriously, she’s a great kid. She’s smart, she’s determined, she knows what she wants. And she sees that you are trying and adores you for it. Which obviously she won’t be telling you, but she does. Sure, she’s upset that moving here meant she had to leave her old friends behind, but she’s old enough to understand that you quit your job to take care of her, that you left your friends behind, too, to make a new one with her. You don’t have to be perfect at this parent thing. You don’t even have to get good at it, not when it’s still so new. You just have to make an effort and keep getting better at it, and, well, you are here, aren’t you?”

“I can’t take care of her on my own. She has to come by _my work_ after school to get some help with homework and a decent dinner.” She seems content enough here, and he is definitely feeling better having her here, where he can keep an eye on her when they don’t have a call, rather than leaving her alone in an empty flat, but it grates that he can’t take care of her properly.

“Well, you know what they say – it takes a firehouse and all that.” Jaskier smiles at him, sadly, and continues, as if he’s reading Geralt’s thoughts, “you know you don’t have to do all of this yourself, right? We may just be lowly firefighters and not mighty army Wolves, but we do take care of each other.”

There is a lump in Geralt’s throat that refuses to be swallowed down. “You don’t get it,” he says, “I failed her. I am still failing her.” It’s not getting easier to admit, but saying it is still more bearable than letting Jaskier’s praise stand uncorrected, than letting him think that the way Geralt has handled his relationship with Ciri, his responsibility for her, is in any way deserving of praise.

Jaskier takes a half-step closer and stares at him, his eyes searching. “Maybe you did,” he concedes, and it’s like a weight off Geralt’s chest, the relief to be judged after all.

“Maybe you did, Geralt. But you aren’t anymore.”

Their shoulders brush. Geralt sways with the movement, untethered, and has to look down to make sure his feet are still firmly planted on the ground. Jaskier ducks his head, just enough to catch Geralt’s gaze.

“Trust me on this, okay?” Jaskier’s tongue darts out to wet his lips. It would be distracting, that quick flash of pink, but something flickers over Jaskier’s face, a moment of hesitation followed by resolve, and that is enough to hold Geralt’s attention for now. However much Geralt would like for this conversation to be over, it’s obviously important to Jaskier that Geralt accept his point, and that’s… something. If it matters this much to Jaskier, it must mean something.

So Geralt listens, and lets Jaskier catch his eyes.

“You are not a bad parent, Geralt.” Jaskier’s gaze flits about for a second, but then resettles, determined. “I know a thing or two about bad parents, and you are not it.”

With that, Jaskier seems to have used up his tolerance for painfully honest conversation. Geralt is still reeling (untethered) from the personal confession Jaskier managed to pack in a few little words, and the heavy implications of it, when Jaskier’s features smooth over and his usual carefree grin reappears.

“Besides, it’s a good thing for a young woman like Ciri to be instinctively suspicious of anything an old, white man in a position of power might tell her. That is neither the right knife nor the right way to efficiently cut butternut squash, and, captain or not, Vesemir has no right to abuse his authority and try to convince her otherwise. If you’ll excuse me, I need to go over there and simultaneously save dinner and make sure they don’t end up stabbing each other.”

Geralt should say something, he thinks, something meaningful, or grateful, but he has no idea how to say _thank you for implying that your parents did worse than me, I feel both better and worse now_ , so he just watches Jaskier walk over to the kitchen area, roll up his sleeves, and insert himself in between Ciri and Vesemir, breaking their stand-off and taking charge in one go.

It’s as he stands there and watches Jaskier make quick work of the squash, knife flashing in swift, showy movements while he lectures Ciri and Vesemir on their crimes against groceries, that it occurs to him that this might explain Jaskier’s habit of loudly and frequently demanding attention from anyone who will give it.

However, maybe the strangest revelation is the realization that, somewhere down the line, he stopped being annoyed by it. That, actually, Jaskier doesn’t even have to ask anymore.

So help him, he’s even begun to appreciate the tight pink yoga pants.

J 5

Jaskier is finishing up his last repetitions for leg day and contemplates treating himself to a long, steaming mid-day shower, but it’s been way too quiet all morning, and he strongly suspects that he is being lured into a false sense of security and the alarm will go off the moment he is all nice and comfy and lathered up. It’s no fun, putting on your kit while you are dripping wet and still have shampoo in your hair.

Lunch has come and gone, even dinner prep is done already, the dishes are not his responsibility because if he’s cooking, then he’s not also cleaning.

Nothing to do but wait. People-watch a bit maybe.

He turns his head. The gym is almost empty, no one but him and Geralt, who is going to town on the punching bag.

That is fortunate.

Geralt boxing is much more impressive than Geralt, say, lifting weights. Not for the raw physical strength behind it, even though the sheer power behind those punches is enough to make Jaskier’s mouth go dry. No, it’s about the movements – fast, precise hits, with enough power behind them that the leather groans under the strain, contrasting with footwork quick and nimble enough that he’d give a dancer a run for his money. And the play of muscle, firm and flexing, under skin alive with the flush of exertion and luminous with a light sheen of sweat…

…and he has stopped and is instead looking back at Jaskier, head tilted to the side quizzically, which sets off a drop of sweat that runs down the side of his face, along the line of his neck, and into the hollow of his throat, and Jaskier mentally slaps his wrist and pulls his eyes back up to Geralt’s face, putting on as harmless an expression as he can muster and trying to project the air of a man who was just watching another man’s extremely fit body purely out of interest in the art of working out.

Geralt looks from the bag to Jaskier and back a few times, considering, and Jaskier smiles at him, thinking harmless thoughts.

“Want a go?”

Geralt steps back from the punching bag, making room for Jaskier to step up.

Jaskier has no interest in punching, be it people or bags, so of course he gets up and walks over to Geralt. By the time he stops, they are standing close enough that he can feel the heat radiating off the other man.

Jaskier trails a finger down the leather of the bag, rubs at the spot right where Geralt hit it last, and shrugs. “Wouldn’t know how, not without breaking my hands.”

Geralt huffs a laugh. “That’s why you wrap them.” He licks his lips, hesitation flashing across his face, and offers, “I could show you?”

That sweet, sweet man. Jaskier can’t help but wet his own lips at the image. It’s tempting, to step in, to hold out his hands to Geralt and have him hold them in a firm yet careful grip, turn them this way and that while he wraps them, supportively and protectively, and lifts them up to diligently check the wrapping is done to his satisfaction.

But he would take something from the act that he isn’t sure Geralt is offering.

And, well. His hands.

“Sorry, darling,” He smiles, to take the sting out of the rejection. “I appreciate the offer, but my fingers are way too valuable to be risked like that.” To demonstrate how very nimble and precious they are, he starts tapping out a little melody on the bag. Piano, of course, but mainly guitar, bass, banjo, that old lute he stumbled over on eBay and couldn’t resist, even though he had to put several thousand dollars into getting it fixed up – if it gets tapped or plucked, it’s his jam.

When he looks up, however, to check that Geralt doesn’t feel slighted by Jaskier dismissing his kind offer, Geralt’s eyes are locked on his fingers, fixated on the flickering movements with the intent, captivated focus of a cat about to pounce, and Jaskier can’t help it, he lets his hands dance up the bag just to track the way Geralt helplessly follows their path.

Their eyes meet, and Jaskier decides to take a leap.

“Geralt,” he starts, and then doesn’t quite know how to continue, shocked by the breathless quality of his voice.

“Jaskier.” Geralt doesn’t sound any more composed, his voice deep and raspy and just as out of breath. It’s encouraging.

“I’ve been noticing something lately, or at least I think I have, and, before I do anything else, I need to ask: Am I misreading the way you look at me?”

He smiles at Geralt, tentatively, a little bit unsure and a lot hopeful.

Geralt takes it in, Jaskier’s stupid, hopeful little smile, the way he has bared his vulnerable throat and is ready to offer his heart on a silver platter, and decides to reply, “I don’t know, how _do_ you think I look at you?”

…That horrid, disgusting man. He’s so lucky that Jaskier has a thing for assholes. Figuratively. Well, and literally.

Still, rude, so Jaskier does his best to glower at him and slaps at his unfairly firm chest, only for Geralt to catch his hand, his fingers rough and hot against Jaskier’s, and press it to his chest, to the spot where his heart beats under his skin.

Jaskier might melt.

“No,” Geralt rumbles, “no, I don’t think you are misreading.”

The warmth of Geralt’s chest against his palm runs up his arm and fills Jaskier up, head to toe, and something swells up inside of him, a feeling of joy and relief and excitement.

“Ah,” he says, “well. Marvelous!” And then his brain thankfully turns back on and he leans forward, brushing his lips against Geralt’s and cutting off anything else he might have embarrassed himself with.

There are no sparks, no fireworks, no frenzy. Geralt’s lips are soft under his, slightly salty, they open easily beneath his when he asks for entrance, and it’s like coming home, good and safe and warm and instantly familiar.

Jaskier could live in this moment forever.

Still, they do break apart eventually, just a bit, standing close and breathing the same air but remembering that there is a world outside of their little cocoon that they’ll need to face at some point.

“Geralt.”

“Mh.” Geralt’s voice is soft and rough and Jaskier wants to wrap himself up in him, but. He swallows and kicks his brain back into gear. Business first. Then pleasure.

“Remember the little arrangement I used to have with Lam— ah, yes, there’s that expression again, like you just bit into a lemon wrapped in an old sock—“ and he wants to kiss it off his stupidly beautiful face, “—and your insistence that what you have no problem with my sexuality – a claim which I’d say you have now given undisputable and very pleasant evidence in favor of – but that it’s the concept of workplace relationships you disapprove of?”

“Mh, and the thought that anyone would have sex with Lambert.” Geralt smiles at Jaskier’s indignant splutter and proves that he can’t be trusted to be the mature one in this relationship by leaning in and planting another kiss on Jaskier’s lips, self-satisfied.

Horrible, horrible man.

“Don’t change the topic, or I’ll explain to you in graphic details why sex with Lambert was an amazing idea. My question is, workplace relationships, bad idea, huge mistake, you would never. You still think that?”

The insecurity sneaks back into his voice, sits cold in his stomach, nervously shifts the fingers still resting on Geralt’s chest, because, if they aren’t on the same page here, then this will end before it has had a chance to really begin.

“That depends.” And now Geralt is starting to look a bit uncertain, as well, like a man who has just realized that there is no guarantee that this is going to go the way he wants it to. “I thought you didn’t do the string-free hookup anymore?”

That’s right. No more no strings, that’s me. But I really miss sex, like, a _lot_ , and you can absolutely have lots of sex in committed relationships. Or so I hear; don’t really have all that much experience with those, and I’ve been given to understand that my time with Valdo was not representative.” He snaps his mouth shut before he can talk about his jerk of an ex even more. Why can’t Geralt be shutting him up with a kiss _now_?

Geralt does, at least, pull him closer, so Jaskier clearly hasn’t entirely ruined the mood.

“Nobody’s perfect. It’s all about making an effort, right?”

Jaskier hums, and leans forward until his forehead rests against Geralt’s. “Making an effort, and things getting better.”

“Mh. That’s good, because I.” Geralt falters, and Jaskier can feel his brow wrinkle against his. He opens his eyes, and Geralt looks at him, shy, sheepish, before his gaze flicks first down to their feet, then back up. “I Don’t have much experience with. _This_. With a man.”

Jaskier feels all squishy inside, is overflowing with it, and incredibly proud of this stupid, horrible, wonderful man before him. He’d assumed, considering, but the admission can’t have been easy for Geralt, and to have him trust Jaskier with this, it’s. Significant. Proof of how far they’ve come, and as much a confession as if Geralt had actually used the word _love_.

He doesn’t know what his face does then, but it must be something, because Geralt’s eyes turn all warm and soft, as if Jaskier is the precious one here.

He lifts his hand, the one that hasn’t been caught above Geralt’s heart this entire time, and cradles the side of Geralt’s face in it, thumb stroking his cheek, reveling in the rasp of his eternal five-o’clock shadow, and, oh, what that rasp could do to certain parts of him, and, actually, his own, on Geralt, where his skin is pale and soft and sensitive, and the things… the things…

…Jaskier, too, is a horrible person, and he proves it by bursting into laughter and completely ruining the moment.

Geralt jerks back. Not much, as Jaskier is pleased to note, not enough to slip out of the way they are wrapped up in each other, just enough to stare at Jaskier in utter confusion.

Jaskier, in turn, tries to look at least vaguely ashame—well, no. He’s way too amused.

“See, darling, the thing is, I did originally look forward to acting as a mentor to the new candidate, before you walked in being all… you.” He grins, as mischievous as he can manage. “What do you say, shall we see if I can teach an old wolf new tricks?”

“I hate you,” Geralt says.

“You know, I think you don’t mean that. I think you don’t mean it at all.”

He beams at Geralt, a little bit smug, a lot happy, as radiant as he can, and lets his smile be the beacon that guides Geralt’s lips back to his.

**Author's Note:**

> 9-1-1 is an ensemble show, and I had originally planned on having e.g. Yen and Valdo also appear in the story and giving the existing characters more room, but in the end, I sidelined pretty much all of them in favor of focusing on Geralt and Jaskier. 
> 
> Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this story, please let me know! You can also find a link to reblog on Tumblr [here](https://des8pudels8kern.tumblr.com/post/639600718715781120/come-on-baby-light-my-fire).


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